Foxconn Releases Test BIOS Fixing Linux Crashes 196
Ryan1984 writes "Only a week after the bad press coverage regarding the Linux-related bugs in a number of motherboards released by Foxconn (which turned out to be the AMI BIOS that several board makers use), Foxconn is the first vendor out with a publicly released test patch that fixes the bulk of the problems, allowing kernel 2.6.26 to run well on the afflicted boards. The remaining issues appear to either be kernel bugs in builds earlier than 2.6.26, issues with the Intel chipset itself, or minor annoyances that Foxconn is still working to resolve. Foxconn representative Heart Zhang has posted on the Ubuntu forums (where the situation began), apologizing for the issues, thanking Foxconn customers and the community at-large for their feedback, and promising that Foxconn will take Linux support and testing seriously, going forward."
Re:But I'm confused now! (Score:3, Insightful)
Damn, beat me to it.
I bet your comment either gets ignored entirely (as is usually the case with insightful meta-commentary) or down-modded ruthlessly with little explanation as to why. Occasionally someone comes along and says "Slashdot is not one person, so there!" while completely ignoring the fact that the consensus is usually denoted via mod points, which are seen as a Good Thing, so therefore its Good to go along with the consensus whenever possible if you want to maintain e-respect.
Also, Linux users need to lose the whole chip on the shoulder attitude. You're not being oppressed, you're just using an operating system with a minority market share.
Re:Bush to judgement? (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm going with "shit, we're getting bad publicity! Fix that now!" ... with a little luck, it will be followed with ... "and don't let it happen again!"
Good sign (Score:5, Insightful)
This whole soap opera, which probably had more to do with copy and paste laziness than conspiracy theories, blew up out of proportions and gave Foxconn a lot of reasons to believe that Linux users are crazy zealots. Yes, I know that the users who actually harassed Foxconn with "OMG microsoft payed you!!!" emails are just a small part of the Linux userbase, but I'd kinda understand if Foxconn took Linux less seriously after that.
The fact that they're now going as far as writing about the patch in the Ubuntu Forums shows that they consider the Linux userbase large and important enough to be worried about the bad press, even though most of the "bad press" was grossly exaggerated. Not-so-many years ago, a company could dismiss the complaints as "nonsense zealotry" with no worries and no financial negative impact whatsoever. Foxcoon seems to believe that this is not the case now.
So, from a "relevance of Linux nowadays" point of view, I consider this to be a very good sign.
Complaining works (Score:5, Insightful)
No company wants to look bad, even to a minority of people. Because it often only takes a minority of people to completely trash a companies reputation, especially in such a competitive market like motherboards.
So if you know of any other manufacturers who have poor Linux support, don't be scared to send them a letter about it and to tell other people who use Linux about your problems with the manufacturer. You might end up afflicting positive change in the long run.
Re:But I'm confused now! (Score:5, Insightful)
"But now they're releasing a fix? That's not sabotage!"
Foxconn got caught and was called front-and-center over it. The evidence is overwhelmingly against them (the sabotage is plainly visible in their own code), so they realize the jig is up. The only rational response, after all the denials failed, is to provide a fix and hope the exposure fades away.
The sabotage doesn't necessarily have to be an explicit agreement between Foxconn and Microsoft, but it was certainly intentional on Foxconn's part. The code that said, essentially, "If Windows, do things right; if Linux, do things wrong" was not an accident. The question of who at Foxconn made the decision to perform the sabotage may never be known, but it was done consciously by someone at Foxconn (for whatever reason).
Re:Rush to judgement? (Score:3, Insightful)
something i would say would be best served by building a standard compliant bios first, and then add fixes for windows idiosyncrasies.
the way it seems to go these days is, build for microsoft products, then try and re-patch for everything else...
give them credit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:no it won't. (Score:5, Insightful)
use freedos...
Strictly publicity, was non-story from the start (Score:5, Insightful)
Foxconn is probably just doing this to avoid negative publicity, despite the fact that BIOSes shouldn't be running any code specific to Linux, due to specific decisions by the kernel developers.
Quoting from an actual kernel developer: [livejournal.com]
Re:But I'm confused now! (Score:1, Insightful)
foxconn makes so many boards for so many manufacturers (hp among others - my vectra vli8 has a foxconn board). they are rather neutral, and their stuff has worked well with linux.
Bigger impact from negative linux reputation. (Score:5, Insightful)
-- What do you think about this PC? Shall I buy it?
*looks through the specs*
Foxconn Mobo? Utter trash! Don't buy it!
I do think that linux users are not many, but we are influential for sure.
Re:Theyre fixing it (Score:2, Insightful)
From the article I read about this maybe a weekago or so, it is 'if os = vista/xp/2000, return reasonable values else if os = linux, return crappy values else bail'.
It sounds like the MB would have been "fine" if they never added this OS check.
Always assume malice (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't just that the table was wrong, there was specific code in the BIOS to point to a a bad table.
This phrase, 'Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence', is absolutely a darkside distraction.
You've heard it so much over the years, that you start to believe it.
It's a *great* cover for darkside machinations.
Incompetence definitely exists, but to let yourself be deluded into thinking that bad things are due to incompetence is to show your own incompetence as a sentient lifeform.
Assume malice first, and search for proof of incompetence.
In this case, specific code was in the BIOS that was malicious.
Re:But I'm confused now! (Score:4, Insightful)
Ironically, considering the lack of fragmentation of the FreeBSD platform, as well as the less restrictive BSD license, I'd imagine FreeBSD would be better suited towards commercial support/drivers. (And, on a more subjective note, its userbase and leadership - less feverish than Linux's and a fair bit more pragmatic - might mesh better with the business world's expectations.)
Re:Always assume malice (Score:3, Insightful)
May I offer you a simple suggestion? If you don't want people to think you're the kind of person who sees conspiracies everywhere, examine your language. "Darkside" suggests there's a large group of people out to conspire against you. It also reeks of internet conspiracy theorist jargon.
Moreover, assuming bad faith [wikipedia.org] from everyone is paranoid, unconstructive and completely anti "open source."
Re:Strictly publicity, was non-story from the star (Score:1, Insightful)
> Anyway. Accusing companies of conspiring against us when the most
> likely explanation is simply that they don't care is a fucking
> ridiculous thing to do and does nothing to get rid of the
> impression that Linux users are a bunch of whining childish hatemongers.
Yeah, but strangely enough it seems to have worked and worked so well we Linux users
got positive results in less than a week. So the lesson I've learned from this is if
some hardware manufacturer is going out of their way to make it difficult for me as
a linux user to use the hardware then bitching at them in a public forum and incurring
the wrath of fellow slashdot readers produces what I consider positive results:
hardware that works with Linux.
Re:But I'm confused now! (Score:1, Insightful)
It could have been sabotage. The alternative is that the BIOS guys at Foxconn are extremely incompetent - that they took a working BIOS development kit, screwed around with it without really knowing what they were doing, and released it because it happened to work with Windows.
Stupidity seems to be far more likely than malice in most cases.
From what the Foxconn guys said, there were problems with this motherboard running Vista, so they fixed them. While they were doing that, they changed a whole heap of code that isn't even used by Vista, and never bothered checking that it still worked on anything else.
It's the typical Microsoft-doesn't-follow-the-standard-so-everybody-codes-to-Microsoft's-non-standard-implementation-instead. Microsoft love it - since their non-standard implementation isn't documented anywhere, it means that it's almost impossible to come up with a compatible re-implementation.
That creates this development culture where gross hacks, workarounds, and even code that's completely illegal under the standards is perfectly fine, as long as it works on two specific Microsoft implementations of ACPI (XP and Vista). The same attitude used to be common among web developers, it's still common among .NET and Windows API developers, and among virtually any group of developers who actually writes stuff to run on Microsoft platforms, due to Microsoft's general habit of releasing buggy software that doesn't do what it claims to, never fixing bugs via patches, not updating it for years, and probably not fixing the bugs even then.
Re:But I'm confused now! (Score:2, Insightful)
We Linux users are not oppressed. But the only way we can find out that product A doesn't work with Linux is either through things like this or through personally buying something and pushing to get it to work.
Maybe this approach will alienate the manufacturer. But the truth is, companies are in it for the money. Either they will need to grow to support Linux really consistently because it is necessary or they will find a way (it might be really easy, for all I know) to remain competitive not supporting Linux consistently--hopefully they'll support Linux consistently by actually conforming to the standard they claim they support, so any OS written to the standard will work. Foxconn or TheAlmightyCthulhu being insufferable dicks doesn't really change things. That's the beauty of the free market. No one gives a shit about you in the long term or what you said. It's all about the money.
Re:But I'm confused now! (Score:1, Insightful)
Have you actually worked with the FreeBSD leadership? It's a rather closed clique of skilled engineers which takes great pride in not releasing adequate kernel documentation to lower the bar for outsiders - quite the opposite of the Linux camp. Beyond this inner sanctum, the contributors with the most influence are often those who know the first group personally.
Yes, it all makes for a more tightly-integrated system and stops fragmentation, but for someone who is interested in building computer systems rather than social networking, it's (surprisingly!) a very anti-geek approach.